‘Public Art’ Articles at Open Spacehttp://openspace.sfmoma.org
Open Space is a hybrid, interdisciplinary publishing platform for artists, writers, et al.Fri, 09 Dec 2016 00:10:02 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.1Sunlight and Shadows: Al Wong in Conversationhttp://openspace.sfmoma.org/2013/05/al-wong/
http://openspace.sfmoma.org/2013/05/al-wong/#respondFri, 03 May 2013 15:04:03 +0000http://blog.sfmoma.org/?p=50481We are presenting daylong screenings of Al Wong’s Twin Peaks (1977) in SFMOMA’s Phyllis Wattis Theater on Free Tuesday, May 7. Over the course of a year the San Francisco native shot this contemplative journey, winding around the distinctive hills in the city. Twin Peaks was featured at SFMOMA in a spotlight screening of his ... More]]>

We are presenting daylong screenings of Al Wong’s Twin Peaks (1977) in SFMOMA’s Phyllis Wattis Theater on Free Tuesday, May 7. Over the course of a year the San Francisco native shot this contemplative journey, winding around the distinctive hills in the city. Twin Peaks was featured at SFMOMA in a spotlight screening of his work in 1977, and last publicly shown in 1980. Here, Al and I revisit this title among others.

Tanya Zimbardo: You received a grant in 1975 from the American Film Institute in association with the NEA to create Twin Peaks. How did the concept for the film develop?

Al Wong: It developed from making Same Difference (1975), filming my kitchen window over an entire year. I believe it was shown at SFMOMA [Exchange: DFW/SFO, 1976]. I had one person, Ursula Schneider, sitting there in a particular position so that while the sky and seasons are constantly changing, she appears to hardly be moving. We got so good at it that when I said it was time to shoot she was able to just hop right up to the table and fit right in, perfectly. She was so kind to help me with this. I had the camera literally gaffer-taped onto the floor so it wouldn’t move. We had to walk around it every time we went in the kitchen. I had to be very careful changing each roll of film. Terry Fox made the soundtrack by looking out my kitchen window and drawing his violin bow over the edge of a large bowl that he had found on Market Street. It was beautiful.

Same Difference made me really look at what was out there. I could see Twin Peaks through that window and wanted to get closer. It is a truly magical place. I’m sure you’ve seen the fog rolling down Twin Peaks like a volcano erupting. I slowly gathered material and started to see all the natural elements — the sky, the earth, the water in the distance. It was then obvious that I had to get the sound of the ocean. One of my favorite places is Baker Beach, so the soundtrack was recorded there. It has this wonderful, deep breathing that keeps changing. If you’ve meditated, you notice that your breathing changes, and if you try to make it consistent, you may be forcing it.

TZ: There is a meditative quality to Twin Peaks, and you’ve often stated the importance of Zen Buddhism in relation to your later work. How did this film dovetail with your own meditation practice?

AW: I started meditation around 1969. Unconsciously though, I was choosing the balance of elements, the soundtrack, and when I would go shoot. The whole thing was intuitive.

TZ: The absence of any ambient or driving noise, and only the sound of the breaking waves, also reminded me of focusing on one’s own breathing rhythm or pulsating blood during silence. We’re directly observing the environment from within the moving vehicle, but I felt this sort of detachment and an auditory sensation that my attention was simultaneously turning inward. You’ve also mentioned the role of repetition and the unique feature of the figure-eight Twin Peaks Boulevard.

AW: Yes. It is like life. We go through this pattern all the time. It is a form of infinity — waking up, brushing our teeth, getting on the trolley. The infinity loop road representing this continuous pattern of life. There are certain sequences in the film where it appears that the parts of the road aren’t meeting and it isn’t a single road anymore. The road is shifting. Life is like that. It shifts and it makes you feel off-balance at times. You have trouble, and then you try to slip back in. And your breathing is still going.

TZ: Could you describe your technical setup within the van?

AW: I was driving. I had to maintain 15 mph. Behind me was a two-by-four with a camera clamped on it. I marked everything so if it moved I could place it back in the position. The camera was there for the whole year in the bus. For the splitting illusion in the window, I simply attached a black, matte cotton cloth right onto the center where the windshield has that divider. When I pulled the cloth back to the camera, I would block one side of the window and the camera would only record the other side and vice versa. You probably know this process, but as a filmmaker, you put the A roll and B roll together, then have it printed, and you take a look at what you have. You notice the two views sometimes appear to really be in sync, but it wasn’t intentional. I figured out the night shots by putting a marker on the tire so that every revolution of that marker, my left hand that is not on the steering wheel, could feel a particular point, pointing upward at 12 o’clock, which meant one revolution. At that marker I would expose the camera from one, two, or three seconds, counting verbally to myself. Then I would move one revolution. It took four hours to shoot 100 feet of film. It was kind of crazy because of the traffic, especially when I’m trying to get across the intersection. After the night sequence, the film comes to an end as the sun has risen and overexposes the film.

TZ: How often did you drive up there? Were you prompted by certain weather conditions?

AW: It varied. It depended on what material I already had. Other moments surprised me when I looked through the binoculars. I thought, I’ve never seen this before. I better go. Hopefully, I would get up there in time. I’m glad I had the binoculars because I had to feel like I was there, not just looking out from my kitchen in Potrero Hill at the time.

TZ: You also used the yearlong parameter for your installation Sunlight (1979). Could you describe that work? Did anyone experience it with you?

AW: The building at Minna Street and Fourth was from the Redevelopment Agency and had been a newspaper printing place and a dentist office. I pretty much blocked out everything from the windows and left a small opening where a mirror could be placed. That mirror would shoot a beam of light. For instance, a funnel would be turning around with a pie pan underneath it with magnets and frankincense. The magnets would help move the funnel in a gyration form. The incense created shapes when the light hit it. The funnel had small holes I had drilled in it. The first beam that comes in, where the funnel is, there was another mirror that shoots back to almost where the mirror in the window is that is capturing the first light from the sun. It was tilted, and another beam would shoot up to the ceiling. And then there was a fish-eye mirror that would open up or flare the light. With the smoke, it created a dome shape within that space. I was really pleased by that. I didn’t know what it was going to do.

Terry Fox would come over. We spent hours watching it. He was only a block away, and we would go back and forth looking at each other’s work. We did some interesting things just walking back and forth. Down from where the museum is now, there was a hotel that was abandoned because of a huge fire. Terry and I got in by climbing through a window from the roof of MOCA (Museum of Conceptual Art). It was almost like a museum of how people had lived there.

TZ: Tell me a bit about Corner (1977), the double film projection of you and Stephen Laub in your Minna Street studio.

AW: The light from the windows was behind us. What we were trying to do was stay close to the wall and relate to the wall space. We would toss objects back to each other and tried to bend a big piece of board. Finally we move to each camera, rotate in opposite directions, and then go in the reverse direction. What happens when it is projected on the corner is that it appears that the images are merging or being swallowed up by the corner seam — sucked in or pushed back out. It was very sculptural.

TZ: I’m thinking of your use of the seam or dividing line in Twin Peaks during those out-of-sync moments when the two landscape views are colliding into each other.

TZ: In the 1970s there were several key figures here, such as Stephen Laub and Jim Melchert, primarily working at the intersection of performance and slide projection — a different time-based medium — in particular, sharing a similar interest with you in creating an interplay between real and filmed components. I’m wondering how much dialogue in general there was between artists and filmmakers about investigating nontraditional projection surfaces in the gallery context. It seems like you were involved with both a group of conceptual artists approaching projection often as an extension of photographic or sculptural concerns, as well as the experimental film community engaging with expanded cinema.

AW: I knew Jim. Stephen and I were friends, and I really loved his work. In terms of other people working with projection, perhaps the best answer was that there were different groups of people hanging out with their own groups, and they didn’t always know what the others were doing. When I was teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute, I taught for many years a class called “Alternative to Film” to encourage students to try to think outside of the box.

TZ: One of my favorite experimental film catalogues is that pocket-size publication that was produced for the show Four and Seven that you guest curated in 1977 at SFAI. It featured a daily rotation of artists’ films, such as Anthony McCall’s solid-light film Line Describing a Cone (1973). In your introduction, you write: “The organization of this exhibition is an attempt to take film out of the movie theater format with its entertainment associations, preconceived barriers, and its limited audience — to become simply an equal medium used in the aesthetics of art. The work presented gives an overview of a range of possibilities involving film.”

AW: Anthony was using film in a nontraditional way. I chose a lot of others who generally didn’t identify as so-called filmmakers, but as artists. I was trying to demonstrate to the public that all of these people they knew would use film because their ideas needed that particular medium, but they were not necessarily caught up by the film medium or any other. They used the materials that were needed to make art. That was my motivation. A film showing in a gallery setting, not in the auditorium.

TZ: You’ve integrated your shadow and the silhouettes of other people in several film-based performances and installations. I’m thinking of the ephemeral figures in silhouette, including yourself, performing tasks or interacting with an actual object in the space. The illusion becomes grounded with an everyday item, a human figure, or the space itself. For example, the luminous paint-covered chair in Shadow and Chair (1979) or the spot-lit microphone in Moon Stand (1980).

AW: Part of the reason why I used my own shadow was that in the early days — well, you don’t even know what I used to do with film! I used to have a whole crew of people in my Volkswagen, and costumes, you name it. It was a crazy party. I finally said I can’t do this for practical reasons. I am the perfect tool for this, and I am here. I’m glad I was able to evolve from a more traditional way.

When I’m doing zazen, usually I have my back toward the morning sun. It casts my shadow on the floor. That shadow brought about other work — for lack of a better word, film installation. It was there for so many years, and I started noticing how wonderful it looked and how much a part of reality it was in the space versus making a narrative movie. So when I’m doing zazen, I’m looking at it in some ways like a projection. Why not film this and project this? I feel it is like a residue of someone’s shadow or my own shadow. I could place it any environment that I wish. If I was projecting an image of myself instead of my shadow, it is more about the illusion of an image.

TZ: I believe that a major characteristic of the Bay Area in the 1980s was this exciting, proliferated activity of live cinema, performance, cinema sculptures, and related experimentation with camera obscura installations and mechanical apparatuses. If you take a few examples from 1984, for instance, you were in the group show Lite/Site/Projection at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, along with a few fellow SFAI colleagues, like Janis Crystal Lipzin and Tony Sinden. The multivenue Perforated, organized by SF Cinematheque, included a program series cosponsored at New Langton Arts, which featured your Moonlight, and other evenings of installations by Michael Rudnick, Jan Novello, among others. Philip Whalen (1981) was shown as part of the Polyphonix 8 festival copresented by SFMOMA, SFAI, and Intersection. Another example, SFMOMA’s SECA Film as Art Award broadened the criteria to include film-based installation and performance (1st prize: Michael Naimark). What are some of your recollections of work from that period?

AW: It bloomed and opened up. At the San Francisco Arts Commission what I did [Around the Gallery, 1984] was film from the street walking into the space, capturing what was in the show, and walking back out. I projected the loop onto a double glass mirror, so when it rotated the image would continue. The projector would project the loop onto a mirror, which had a motor attached to the ceiling, used for store displays, that I found at Goodwill. I had done a similar early mirror piece at the SFAI Annual (1976) that was presented that year on 16th Street, one artist every week. It was an image of me walking around the storefront that could fit into the space as it rotated. There were two storefront windows that I painted white to become like a screen. Imagine that the projection is fitting within one window and what is being projected is the room rotating and at a certain point also recording the rotation of the mirror.

TZ: You made other pieces and organized group shows in storefront windows for an audience of passersby. Around that time you began site-specific public commissions and mixed-media installations. You applied paint to hardware netting to investigate various interrelationships and formal oppositions, the shift between the lights turning on and off, or the transition from daylight into evening. Figures disappearing with the light and revealed in the darkness. Your 1984 exhibition in the WorkSpace series at the New Museum refers to these works with netting as shadow or spatial drawings. It strikes me that they synthesize your training as a painter and your ideas of projection.

AW: Yes, both. I was thrilled that I didn’t need to use a projector anymore to get a shadow form. The film projector always used to bother me because the sound was distracting. There is of course movement with natural light because the sun is moving subtly. At the fire station [Light Clouds, 1994], sunlight comes into the canopy and casts light forms or changes because there is a cloud or fog. The forms appear and disappear again. It is similar to my recent works on paper that use back-lighting.

TZ: Your 1988 show at the Whitney Museum of American Art featured several installations, including Each Time I See You, I Feel It Could Be the Last Time. A silhouette of your father, Willie Wong, is standing by a television set that plays your home movie-style footage spanning 1966 until his death in 1986. It is culled from hours of your film, video, and photos of your family. You also visited China to film where he had lived before he immigrated in 1917. How did you decide to start filming him and your stepmother? At what point did you know you wanted to turn it into a piece?

AW: A year before he died. I wanted to capture his shadow. I had him stand there. Normally I take a 35mm slide and shoot it from waist level. I draw the outline on paper and paint the netting on top. From the beginning, for my love of my father, I just wanted to record him. I just wanted to keep him, as a son who loved his parents. I shot many good events and difficult real-life situations.

I was late going to his little apartment. A one-room in Chinatown in a five-floor building; each floor might have maybe 30 or 40 rooms with no bathroom, only one down the hall. He had a sink and one hot plate. Because he was a chef and went to culinary school in Chicago, he made wonderful food for us on that one hot plate. I got there an hour and a half late. Pop had had a stroke. He was still holding his newspaper. After the funeral, I started writing notes in a journal about what happened. I recorded shining a flashlight on that page. That appears in the video.

Twin Peaks is dedicated to Pop and Laura.

Al Wong (b. 1939, San Francisco) lives and works in the Sunset district. He received his MFA in 1972 from the San Francisco Art Institute, where he taught from 1975 until his retirement in 2003. Wong began showing his films in 1967 before turning to film and mixed-media installation a decade later, and then to video and works on paper since the 1980s. Twin Peaks was featured in solo screenings at such venues as SFMOMA and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. His work has been the subject of solo presentations at the Whitney Museum of American Art; Collective for Living Cinema; the New Museum; Millenium, New York; Mini Galeria, Zurich; Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art, Philadelphia College of Art, Philadelphia; Gallery Tamura, Tokyo; Art/Tapes/22, Florence; SITE Inc., San Francisco, among others. Wong has participated in numerous national and international film festivals, group programs and exhibitions, including at the Instituto de Estudios Norteamericanos, Barcelona; Centro Columbo Americano, Medellin and Bogota, Colombia; Emily H. Davis Art Gallery, University of Ohio, Akron; Kuntsmuseum, Bern, Switzerland; Osaka Triennale 2001, Osaka, Japan; Filmmuseum, Vienna, Austria; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Asian American Film Festival; AIR Gallery, New York; Expo 67, Montreal; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; SFMOMA; de Young Museum; San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery; Capp Street Project; New Langton Arts; Eye Music; SF Cinematheque; Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; the Oakland Museum of California Art. He has been the recipient of awards from the Flintridge Foundation, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Rocky Mountain Film Center, National Endowment for the Arts, and American Film Institute.

]]>http://openspace.sfmoma.org/2013/05/al-wong/feed/0Receipt of Delivery: Mike Mandel & Larry Sultan – Tieshttp://openspace.sfmoma.org/2012/08/receipt-of-delivery8/
http://openspace.sfmoma.org/2012/08/receipt-of-delivery8/#respondFri, 17 Aug 2012 13:30:50 +0000http://blog.sfmoma.org/?p=43289Receipt of Delivery is a weekly series featuring Bay Area exhibition mailers selected from the SFMOMA Research Library’s collection of artists’ ephemera. Mike Mandel (b. 1950) and Larry Sultan (1946–2009) began their 30-year collaboration around their shared interest in cultural artifacts and the idea of the billboard. Designing and then documenting their own noncommercial billboards ... More]]>

Receipt of Delivery is a weekly series featuring Bay Area exhibition mailers selected from the SFMOMA Research Library’s collection of artists’ ephemera.

Mike Mandel (b. 1950) and Larry Sultan (1946–2009) began their 30-year collaboration around their shared interest in cultural artifacts and the idea of the billboard. Designing and then documenting their own noncommercial billboards based on photographic studies, they wryly addressed notions of California industry and wealth in the seventies. These public interventions aimed to influence passersby to become more aware of advertising, to stop and consider the projects’ ambiguous information and the context of the location, instead of subconsciously processing it.

The billboards also initially offered the artists control over how their work would be seen—they could put out their ideas and have an impact in the public arena, regardless of whether this new form of activity received the acknowledgment it deserved from the local photo and art communities at the time. Mandel and Sultan also supported one another as associates in the business of self-publishing their photographic work. The year prior to the installation of Ties [1978] in the financial district, they held a groundbreaking exhibition at SFMOMA for their project and book Evidence [1977], based on found photographs they culled from the archives of corporations, government agencies, research laboratories, and police departments. One could argue that Ties parallels a larger uprising or questioning within photography by the mid-1970s, a loosening of the formal tie, as it also gained more public awareness and support in the art market. The academic tradition that had carried a sense of resistance to new ideas, to redefining photography, and to interdisciplinary approaches, was changing. The artistic use of billboards has continued as a widespread and dynamic vehicle for public art and media critique.

Look out next month for the new book Larry Sultan & Mike Mandel, surveying the complete documentation of their artistic collaboration, including 12 billboard projects [1973-1990].

]]>http://openspace.sfmoma.org/2012/08/receipt-of-delivery8/feed/0Three Heads, Six Armshttp://openspace.sfmoma.org/2010/05/three-heads-six-arms/
http://openspace.sfmoma.org/2010/05/three-heads-six-arms/#respondWed, 26 May 2010 20:16:24 +0000http://blog.sfmoma.org/?p=13587If you haven’t yet seen Shanghai-based artist Zhang Huan’s monumental new public sculpture, “Three Heads, Six Arms,” it is now on display at San Francisco’s Civic Center and is well worth a look. The piece will be on display through 2011. (Shanghai is one of our 17 sister cities, not including Paris which, in what ... More]]>

If you haven’t yet seen Shanghai-based artist Zhang Huan’s monumental new public sculpture, “Three Heads, Six Arms,” it is now on display at San Francisco’s Civic Center and is well worth a look. The piece will be on display through 2011.

(Shanghai is one of our 17 sister cities, not including Paris which, in what we believe must be a paean to non gender-specific, long-term civil/civic relationships, is characterized as a “partner city.” But we digress).

And a look at Mr. Zhang’s earlier, conceptual performance-based work is also well worth your time. Some of our favorites include To Raise the Water Level in a Fishpond(1997), a Dada-esque land art performance project. As Mr. Zhang describes it:

I invited about forty participants, recent migrants to the city who had come to work in Beijing from other parts of China. They were construction workers, fishermen and labourers, all from the bottom of society. They stood around in the pond and then I walked in it. At first, they stood in a line in the middle to separate the pond into two parts. Then they all walked freely, until the point of the performance arrived, which was to raise the water level. Then they stood still. In the Chinese tradition, fish is the symbol of sex while water is the source of life. This work expresses, in fact, one kind of understanding and explanation of water. That the water in the pond was raised one metre higher is an action of no avail.

And My New York(2002), where the artist donned an over-muscularized caricature of a bodybuilder, made from read meat. From the artist’s website:

Something may appear to be formidable, but I will question whether or not it truly is so powerful. Sometimes such things may be extremely fragile, like body builders who take drugs and push themselves beyond the limits of their training on a long term basis, until their heart cannot possibly bear such enormous stress.In this work I combine three symbols: migrant workers, doves, and body building. I interpret my New York through concerns of identity, through the Buddhist tradition of setting live animals free (to accumulate grace), and through man’s animal nature and machinelike qualities.

A body builder will build up strength over the course of decades, becoming formidable in this way. I, however, become Mr. Olympic Body Builder overnight.

My New York by Zhang Huan. Photo from the artist’s website.

You can watch the video of the dedication ceremony below. Translated comments from the artist begin at around 28:00 minutes.

More images and information about Zhang Huan’s wide-ranging and provocative practice are available on his website.

]]>http://openspace.sfmoma.org/2010/05/three-heads-six-arms/feed/01001 Words: 02.07.10http://openspace.sfmoma.org/2010/02/1001-words-02-07-10/
http://openspace.sfmoma.org/2010/02/1001-words-02-07-10/#commentsSun, 07 Feb 2010 19:02:46 +0000http://blog.sfmoma.org/?p=9243*an ongoing series of individual images presented for speculation and scrutiny, with only tags at the bottom to give context. Because sometimes words are never enough…]]>

*an ongoing series of individual images presented for speculation and scrutiny, with only tags at the bottom to give context. Because sometimes words are never enough…

]]>http://openspace.sfmoma.org/2010/02/1001-words-02-07-10/feed/4Wonderland, A Follow-Uphttp://openspace.sfmoma.org/2009/09/wonderland-a-follow-up/
http://openspace.sfmoma.org/2009/09/wonderland-a-follow-up/#commentsFri, 18 Sep 2009 22:53:16 +0000http://blog.sfmoma.org/?p=6113More]]>On September 7th, I posted a blog entitled, “Wonderland: A world turned upside down” in regards to Lance Fung’s multi-site public art exhibition occurring in the Tenderloin in mid-October. The response to this post was overwhelming: there are currently fifteen comments posted, the majority of which are almost as long as the article itself. The commenters included participating artists, interns, former collaborators of Fung’s, social workers and educators in the Tenderloin, those outside the San Francisco art scene and those within it. These thorough and often heated responses communicated to myself and the larger public that people are eager to discuss the issues surrounding Wonderland and that it remains a highly complex and controversial exhibition. I am pleased that the SFMOMA blog Open Space provided a forum for this discussion and hope that the conversation will continue during Wonderland’s symposium on October 18th. While it would be exhaustive to address each comment individually, I would like to take the opportunity to respond to some concerns and outline the two general sentiments I noticed in the comments.

I appreciated, very much, the responses from the artists and those currently or previously involved in Fung’s projects. Clearly, the experiences of the participating artists provide a nuanced perspective into the project and I am glad to know that many have and continue to carefully consider their position within the Tenderloin neighborhood and Wonderland show. These comments, as well as many conversations I have had with participants, assures me that many of the individual artists are aware of the potential problematics of designating the Tenderloin as a “wonderland.” As I acknowledged on September 7th, many projects will benefit the community members of the Tenderloin and provide them with creative opportunities they might otherwise not have. As the artists’ investments prove, Wonderland will undoubtedly have a positive social impact in the Tenderloin, particularly in comparison to other exhibitions that take place within museums and do not directly engage with the public. I appreciated the opportunity to think more deeply about these individual projects.

While I was pleased to read the response from the artists of “Offstage” and pleased to see that they were tracking the Open Space comments, albiet an edited version, on their own blog, I remain disappointed in the missed opportunity to truly engage in the politics at the heart of this project. This project exemplifies a question that I hold dear to my own practice: in what ways do we as artists have the potential to also function as politically engaged citizens, particularly when engaging with marginalized communities?

The concerns that led me to write “Wonderland: A world turned upside down,” and were later reiterated in the comment box have less to do with the individual projects but broader issues regarding tourism, representation and sustainability. In an attempt not to be repetitive, I will say that there remains a complex relationship between art, artists and gentrification. We live in a metropolitan area where property is highly contested. Artists and independently owned galleries are often the “first wave of gentrification” as neighborhoods with cheaper rents and adequate space are appealing for live/work environments. It is a catch-22, as the presence of artists targets the neighborhoods as up-and-coming arts districts, thus paving the way for private developers and wealthier people and displacing low-income residents. The rhetoric used by Wonderland of “rediscovery” and “renewing the Tenderloin as a site for tourists” would make anyone privy to these issues alarmed.

As Zachary Royer Scholz pointed out, the ambiguity of the press release and inability to determine the intentions of the project (for the residents or tourists?) left myself and many others with these questions. Wonderland has produced three press releases in the last several months, the most recent of which was emailed to me by the project manager since the September 7th post. There have been significant changes to the language used within the press releases. For example, Fung’s description of the neighborhood as “seedy and dangerous” has been deleted. These changes confirm that the organizers of this event have given thought to the way that the project was presented and are sensitive to further stigmatizing the Tenderloin.

It is my belief that no one remains outside the realm of criticism, myself included, and so I contend that one’s reputation as a world renowned curator does not relieve them of the need to be accountable and clear with their intentions. I recognize, as Geoffrey of the SF Recovery Theater stated and Mira A. Carberry reiterated, that this level of engagement of “high art” within the Tenderloin does not happen everyday, however, this fact does not negate the desire to have the broader and long-term social justice issues surrounding this exhibition addressed.

A recent conversation I had with a long-time resident of the Tenderloin encapsulates the complexities of this project. While this resident, who prefers to remain anonymous, was immediately skeptical of Wonderland, stating his suspicion of “a blockbuster art show in the poorest neighborhood in San Francisco,” he later recognized that at a micro-level many artists were engaging consciously within the neighborhood. “On one hand, there is a lot of positivity between my neighbors and some of the Wonderland artists. And that is great to see. On the other hand, I’m frustrated about my neighborhood becoming some kind of amusement park. They’ve been trying to clean up this area for a longtime now. When all this is said and done, I sure hope these artists stick around. I hope they are here in a year or two when the city keeps trying to take our property and rights away from us.”

One participating artist commented that she hopes the questions raised about Wonderland will not overshadow the ability of visitors to connect with the work. I, too, hope that those participating within the exhibtion, whether as an artist, organizer, resident or tourist will be able to openly engage with the projects, while also taking these critical questions to heart. Wonderland raises many questions. The answer isn’t not to hold art exhibitions in the Tenderloin, nor is it not to engage with the communities who live there, but to always remain conscious and accountable to one’s position and to hold on to this productive tension during the month long exhibition and well into the future.

]]>http://openspace.sfmoma.org/2009/09/wonderland-a-follow-up/feed/2Wonderland: A world turned upside downhttp://openspace.sfmoma.org/2009/09/wonderland-a-world-turned-upside-down/
http://openspace.sfmoma.org/2009/09/wonderland-a-world-turned-upside-down/#commentsTue, 08 Sep 2009 05:50:23 +0000http://blog.sfmoma.org/?p=4362Wonderland: a land of wonder, curiosities and marvels. Wonder: something strange and surprising. A cause of astonishment. In the popular novel, Alice and her Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, a young girl follows a rabbit down its rabbit hole to find herself in a place that, from her perspective, is full of nonsense and ... More]]>

Wonderland: a land of wonder, curiosities and marvels.

Wonder: something strange and surprising. A cause of astonishment.

In the popular novel, Alice and her Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, a young girl follows a rabbit down its rabbit hole to find herself in a place that, from her perspective, is full of nonsense and chaos. In Wonderland Alice meets a cast of characters, anthropomorphic plants and animals and travels through a fantasy land that is far from the hum-drum bore of the world she just left behind.

The Wonderland that curator Lance Fung refers to in his upcoming public, collaborative project is far from the fantastical space of Carroll’s novel. Fung’s Wonderland is the Tenderloin. Tucked between wealthy neighborhoods like Nob Hill and Union Square, the Tenderloin is a small, densely populated neighborhood. The Tenderloin, like many urban areas, is a difficult place to describe and categorize. The Tenderloin has the highest percentage of families, children and immigrants living in any area of San Francisco. Its residents are largely low-income people who are marginalized due to class, citizenship status, race, gender and sexuality, many of whom do not get the social services they need.

Fung has curated ten collaborative groups to create projects in multiple sites throughout this neighborhood including public venues and community organizations. The project features forty-six artists, including those currently living in San Francisco, and other artists both nationally and internationally located. Wonderland began as a graduate level course taught by Fung at the San Francisco Art Institute. According to the press release, Wonderland is “born of and responds to” the diversities of the Tenderloin. The show’s primary audience is cited as those who live or work in the Tenderloin. Later the press release states that it will transform the Tenderloin into a destination for tourists, opening on October 17th with a block party in Boedekker Park, the projects will remain open for one month. Wonderland is sponsored by the North of Market Community Benefit District and several galleries in the area including the 1AM Gallery and Ever Gold Gallery.

Those are the facts: the title, the neighborhood and the project. To be honest, my research about Wonderland has raised a lot of complicated feelings and concerns for me—many of which are difficult to articulate and relate to many broader issues I have attempted to address here on Open Space; questions related to public art, to socially engaged art practices, to gentrification and specifically to San Francisco’s uneven economic and social landscape.

Izida Zorde articulated similar concerns in her introduction to the recent July 2009 issue of the Canadian arts journal, Fuse. She states, “Many artistic interventions that skirt the surface of social networks—when divorced from the desire for community empowerment and transformation—can actually have the effect of institutionalizing the negative social impacts of a neo-liberalizing society. What responsibilities do artists working in relation to communities have to engage not just with their surface but also with their underlying politics and realities?” Zorde’s questions couldn’t have more relevancy to Fung’s exhibition. While the Wonderland press release acknowledges the complexities of the Tenderloin and many projects may benefit the community members they directly engage with, I’m concerned about the goal of “renewing the neighborhood as a tourist destination,” as stated in the press release. I’m also concerned about the sustainability of these projects and fear that Wonderland will re-brand a low-income neighborhood as an “arts district” without addressing the underlying politics and realities for those who live there now, not those who may move in once new galleries open and property values rise.

There are several projects included in Wonderland that do engage directly with community organizations and non-profits. The collaborative group “Cents” is working with the Boys and Girls Club, producing drawings based on the children’s ideas of home and shelter. The drawings will then be assembled into a three-dimensional structure and displayed in various locations throughout the Tenderloin as a way of engaging with the public. Postcards of the drawings will be made available and passersby will be encouraged to write their own messages about home on the back. Other projects include engaging with small business owners, interviewing senior citizens about parenting, creating a radio broadcast of residents singing songs in a variety of languages and a collaboration with the after school program at Glide Memorial Church.

One project is particularly troubling to me. The project “Offstage” began with research into the history of the Tenderloin as a theater district and extends this history to what is described on the Wonderland blog as “the theatricality of the streets” that depicts “human drama in extremely raw form.” The artists describe the inhabitants of the Tenderloin as conducting “melodramatic behaviors common to urban vagabonds” often induced by inebriation. In order to make visual this phenomenon, as they describe it, the artists chose to abstract and replicate sleeping bag forms, to reference those without shelter in the neighborhood and will install these forms in the windows of the Golden Gate Theater located on Taylor street. In the last paragraph of the project description the artists state, “In our installation, we bring focus to the life on the streets of the Tenderloin, allowing the spectacle of the street to take center stage. Consequently, the “characters” are brought closer to the streets by featuring a “show” that is available to all pedestrians and inhabitants of the neighborhood.” In conjunction with this project description, the blog features photographs that mimic those captured by surveillance cameras—images taken from afar, without the persons awareness, and altered to highlight them through a spotlight, as though to exemplfy exactly who this cast of characters are.

It remains unclear to me how this project functions within the framework of Wonderland as a community centered project whose primary audience is intended to be residents of the Tenderloin. While the artists were apparently inspired by their observations within the neighborhood, the perspective remains that of someone outside, falling back on the assumptions often made about people who live “on the wrong side of the tracks.” All too often urban areas such as the Tenderloin are represented one-dimensionally through the lens of all that is considered dangerous and illegal. Yes, there is crime in the Tenderloin, yet there are also internal communities within these neighborhoods and systems of checks and balances that often remain unseen to those who do not live there.

Image of proposed project from the “Offstage” project description on the Wonderland blog

The true issue that underlies the premise of “Offstage” is a city government that continues to cut funding for a population of people who are addicts and/or have mental illnesses and are in need of basic social services. So long as clinics, rehabilitation centers, and shelters continue to loose financial support, the street will remain a site in which all areas of people’s lives are made highly visible. By naming this situation as a “show” the artists of “Offstage” invite visitors to observe this “spectacle” at a distance, from the position of an audience member, a tourist passing through the neighborhood. Additionally, the aestheticization of homelessness in the form of sleeping bags ascending from a theater does little to address the “social representation and change” as the description on the blog states. How do the residents of the Tenderloin, those “urban vagabonds” described in “Offstage” benefit from such a representation?

I’m not terribly interested in identifying which projects are more or less appropriate or community oriented and which are not, rather, my concerns lie with the framework of the project as a whole. Certainly, Wonderland provides artists, particularly young, recently graduated MFA students with an opportunity to gain exposure and participate in a large scale exhibition, an opportunity especially exciting for those interested in socially engaged work. It is my hope that these artists reflect on their own position and consider how they are engaging with the Tenderloin community. As opposed to an ephemeral connection facilitated through an art show, building sustainable relationships fosters a more complex understanding of the Tenderloin. Artist, Michael Swaine’s project “Sewing for the People” serves as an excellent example of such a project. On the 15th of every month, Swaine sets up a portable sewing cart on Cohen Alley in the Tenderloin, repairing holes and mending clothes. Swaine’s project has continued for so long now that he has a regular clientele and has developed relationships with residents of the neighborhood. His project utilizes his own craft skills while offering a basic service to anyone who desires it.

The opening night of Wonderland will undoubtedly draw crowds of hundreds to the Tenderloin, given Fung’s reputation and the publicity that the show has received. The visitors will experience not only the individual projects but the neighborhood, as well. As the poorest, most stigmatized neighborhood in San Francisco will become highly visible for a brief period of time, the attention of the visitors or art tourists turned to the neighborhood itself. While I am a proponent of removing art from museums and making it more accessible to the general public, I am skeptical of this brief encounter with the Tenderloin, the lure and thrill of visiting San Francisco’s seediest neighborhood (a word used by Fung in the press release to describe the Tenderloin) for one night through a voyeuristic meandering. Within this scenario, I fear that the spectacle of the poor will remain in place and sustainable change and awareness about what is truly at stake for residents in the Tenderloin will be more and more difficult to enact.

It is not my intention to discourage artists from attempting to address politics or community engagement within their practice, however I think it is imperative to consider the broader impacts of our artistic practices within geographical contexts that we have little connection with. By not engaging with the underlying politics and realities within a place like the Tenderloin, artists’ projects have the danger of replicating power dynamics that help to sustain systems of oppression and social hierarchy. Within the context of the drastic funding cuts to social services in the Tenderlion and the extremely high rate of homelessness in San Francisco, it is imperative to question who benefits when the neighborhood is turned into a tourist destination? Whose lives are on display? Who plays the role of Alice, falling down the rabbit hole to experience a world turned upside down, only to wake up later and return to her safe and comfortable life? Who’s wonderland is this?

]]>http://openspace.sfmoma.org/2009/09/wonderland-a-world-turned-upside-down/feed/15“Without the public these works are nothing,” participating with Felix Gonzalez-Torreshttp://openspace.sfmoma.org/2009/08/without-the-public-these-works-are-nothing-participating-with-felix-gonzalez-torres/
http://openspace.sfmoma.org/2009/08/without-the-public-these-works-are-nothing-participating-with-felix-gonzalez-torres/#commentsSat, 22 Aug 2009 07:51:29 +0000http://blog.sfmoma.org/?p=5079For the past seven months, a copy of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s black and white print of a bird soaring through a cloud streaked sky has hung on the wall above my desk. This wall is opposite my bed which means that the print is usually one of the first things I see when I wake up ... More]]>

For the past seven months, a copy of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s black and white print of a bird soaring through a cloud streaked sky has hung on the wall above my desk. This wall is opposite my bed which means that the print is usually one of the first things I see when I wake up in the morning. I took two copies of Gonzalez-Torres’s print from SFMOMA’s The Art of Participationexhibition last January, carefully rolling them and tucking them in my bag as I biked home. I tacked one above the various photographs, postcards, and notes that have gathered on the wall above my desk and the other I gave to a friend who had just moved into a new house.

During The Art of Participation these prints, known as Untitled 1992/1993, were placed one ontop of another in a stack placed on the floor of one of the galleries. The description of the print lists the printing method, offset lithograph on paper, and then includes this important detail in paranthesis: (endless copies). Visitors were encouraged to take a print home with them and as they did this sculptural stack of paper-thin prints would decrease in size and then would be replenished after hours, probably by a museum staff member, a ritual that will happen endlessly whenever this piece is on view.

The story of Gonzalez-Torres is well known. He immigrated to New York City from Cuba, gaining recognition as an artist in the late 1980s through his minimalist sculptures and installations that often referenced issues of public and private, accumulation and loss. The foundation on which the majority of his work was grounded was his relationship with his long-time partner, Ross Laycock. In 1989 he started exhibiting these stack pieces at MOMA, the Guggenheim and Andrea Rosen Gallery. It was during this time that Ross was dying of AIDS, and the stack pieces represented this process of letting go—they disappeared, yet unlike the inevitability of Ross’s death, the prints would return in their endless cycle of presence and absence. The prints themselves often depicted ephemeral moments; a bird flying or the texture of the surface of the water. These transient moments were captured on film and then in a sincere gesture, extended to others as a gift. Four years after Ross’s death, in an interview with Robert Storr for ArtPress, Gonzalez-Torres said, “When people say, ‘Who is your public?’ I honestly say, without skipping a beat, ‘Ross.’ The public was Ross. The rest of the people just come to the work.”

Felix Gonzalez-Torres print in Nicole's bedroom in the Lower Haight, San Francisco

While Gonzalez-Torres’s stacks function as homages to his most cherished relationship, they operate on another level altogether. The endless prints designed to be taken from the museum dislodge the institution from its role as a sanctified space in which visitors view art and don’t interact with it. They challenge the authorship assumed by individual artists within this space. Sure, the prints exist within the galleries, the stacks functioning as sculptures as much as they are a practical means of disseminating the prints, yet, the participants in Gonzalez-Torres’s piece are given the power to recontextualize the work through their own personal environments and interpretations. After The Art of Participation exhibition I started to notice these prints covering the walls of many of my friend’s homes. Their homes became informal exhibition spaces; the residents who inhabit the homes and guests who visit become impromptu viewers taking in the work or acknowledging it as background decor. While the work was made for Ross, the greater public is an integral component. Gonzalez-Torres said, “Without the public these works are nothing. I need the public to complete the work. I ask the public to help me, to take responsibility, to become part of my work, to join in.” And it is true, without our participation, the stack pieces wouldn’t function according to their intentions. Yet, this is about more than just participating in the function of a work, it is about sharing in Gonzalez-Torres’s grief and the lesson of letting go. Gonzalez-Torres makes the work for Ross and then disseminates it to the broader public as an endless gift given without restricting its interpretation or use.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres print in Paola's bedroom in Palo Alto.

Once it leaves the museum the contextualization and interpretation of the print is open—horizontal versus vertical, the bird ascending or plunging downwards. I am always a little bit surprised to find the Untitled 1992/1993 print hanging in a direction different than what I interpreted as its most natural orientation (horizontal with the bird ascending). In the photograph of the print sent to me by Paola Santoscoy there is an interesting relationship between the image and the environment of her bedroom. Her bed makes its way into the bottom left frame of the photograph. Its messiness and the white sheets and pillow is reminiscent of the bed featured in Gonzalez-Torres’ Untitled billboard piece from 1992. Gonzalez-Torres’s billboard features a photograph of an unmade bed with two white pillows that preserve the imprints of two bodies—deep indentations in the white fabric where two heads rested. This photograph was made the year after Ross’s death. It speaks to the loss endured by Gonzalez-Torres and the attempt to preserve the ephemerality of their relationship in the face of Ross’s illness. Displayed on 24 different billboards, Gonzalez Torres’s loss became part of the New York City landscape, yet another public acknowledgment of his personal grief. While Santoscoy’s photograph lacks the intentionality of Gonzalez-Torres’s billboard, as an informal snapshot of the print taken by my request, I find something comforting about the Gonzalez-Torres’s Untitled 1992/1993 print returning to the private context of a bedroom and photographed in such a way that the lineage of his work is suggested through the visiblity of the bed, the site of intimacy for Gonzalez-Torres and also a symbol of loss.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres print behind James Bradley's bookcase in South of Market, San Francisco.

In James Bradley’s bedroom Untitled 1992/1993 fades to the background, one third of the print peeks out behind a crowded bookcase. Here, the work is one of many room decorations, receiving even less attention than a highly saturated color image of an orange tabby cat posing among flowers and grass. The print from MOMA functions as wallpaper, some layer of a past decor that has since been deemed undesirable or forgotten. There is something incredibly un-precious about the give-away aspect of this work. Gonzalez-Torres relinquishes control over the display of the prints beyond the museum. For as many prints as there are that were carefully carried home from the museum and hung in just the right location, there are prints that never made it, that were bent, or later discarded, have faded to the background, or are glanced at once or twice and appear unremarkable without the story of Gonzalez-Torres that is imbedded within them. In a sense, the importance of this work has more to do with the act of taking them away than it does the recontextualization that occurs through the various locations that the prints end up in.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres print in Eric's bedroom in Temescal, North Oakland.

I love imagining the invisible web of homes across the Bay Area that now hold this Gonzalez-Torres print. These homes contribute to a potentially endless network of informal exhibition spaces that grow over the years as Untitled, 1992/1993 and other prints continue to be shown in national and international exhibitions. The participants have the opportunity to form their own relationship with the piece, as the photographs here have shown. While the endless prints quickly outlived Gonzalez-Torres, his own death from AIDS complications was in 1996, seventeen years after they were first displayed, they continue to be a gift given from him, for Ross, and for the public that Gonzalez-Torres relied on.

Thanks to Paola, James, Eric, and Nicole for the photos.

]]>http://openspace.sfmoma.org/2009/08/without-the-public-these-works-are-nothing-participating-with-felix-gonzalez-torres/feed/3Green Architecture: Building for the People?http://openspace.sfmoma.org/2009/08/green-architecture-building-for-the-people/
http://openspace.sfmoma.org/2009/08/green-architecture-building-for-the-people/#commentsSun, 09 Aug 2009 03:05:12 +0000http://blog.sfmoma.org/?p=4934In response to my recent post “This land wasn’t made for you and me”, my fellow columnist, Anuradha Vikram asked me for examples of humanizing green building projects to compare to my critique of both the San Francisco’s Federal Building’s “public” plaza and the houses built by Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation (MIR) in ... More]]>

In response to my recent post “This land wasn’t made for you and me”, my fellow columnist, Anuradha Vikram asked me for examples of humanizing green building projects to compare to my critique of both the San Francisco’s Federal Building’s “public” plaza and the houses built by Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation (MIR) in New Orleans that I wrote about back in June. Over the past couple of days I’ve been trying hard to think of green building projects in the Bay Area that incorporate a functional shared public space. Due to my lack of expertise in architecture, I’d like to open up Anu’s comment as a question for others to respond to: What are good examples of humanizing green building projects in the Bay Area?

In contrast to building projects previously discussed, I’d like to briefly mention The Heidelberg Project started by Tyree Guyton in Detroit, Michigan. Back in 1986, East Detroit struggled to recover from the aftermath of the Detroit riots and faced a depleted economy and racially segregated neighborhoods. Guyton, a resident of Heidelberg Street since the age of 12, began cleaning up his increasingly abandoned and blighted neighborhood with an enclave of children who lived nearby. With the materials they gathered from the vacated residences and lots, Guyton and the neighborhood kids collaborated to create art environments and installations in the vacant lots, on street posts, and the facades of homes. The city of Detroit resisted, of course, demolishing a portion of the project in 1991 and then again in 1999. However, The Heidelberg Project persisted and now operates as a non-profit arts organization, hosting a series of year round workshops and educational programs for schools and youth in the area.

Clearly, the context of The Heidelberg Project and the public plaza of the San Francisco Federal Building or MIR differ greatly and the comparison is a stretch, at best. However, I mention The Heidelberg Project as a way to push the possibilities of our collective spaces and as an example of a community-driven public art project that not only functions in the context of an urban neighborhood facing poverty and disenfranchisement, but employs the creative reuse of material and space—a thread that runs through many of my recent blog postings.

On that note, I look forward to hearing from Open Space readers about green building projects and public spaces in the Bay Area.

The Heidelberg Project, decorated home on Heidelberg Street, Detroit, Michigan

]]>http://openspace.sfmoma.org/2009/08/green-architecture-building-for-the-people/feed/8Public Art and Improvement, Part 2http://openspace.sfmoma.org/2009/07/public-art-and-improvement-part-2/
http://openspace.sfmoma.org/2009/07/public-art-and-improvement-part-2/#commentsWed, 22 Jul 2009 19:46:12 +0000http://blog.sfmoma.org/?p=4301Back in April I posted a blog entitled Public Art and Redevelopment that looked at the new condominium building currently under construction on the corner of Valencia and 18th Street in the Mission District and more generally, raised the issue of the role of public art within the context of redevelopment. Today I’m focusing again ... More]]>

Back in April I posted a blog entitled Public Art and Redevelopment that looked at the new condominium building currently under construction on the corner of Valencia and 18th Street in the Mission District and more generally, raised the issue of the role of public art within the context of redevelopment. Today I’m focusing again on the Mission District and specifically, the impending public art project that is folded into one of the many city sponsored improvement plans.

The Valencia Streetscape Improvement Project was initiated and sponsored by the San Francisco Department of Public Works. In 2006, the Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) received an Environmental Justice Grant from Caltrans to create a Pedestrian Safety Plan for Valencia Street and for the past three years this plan has slowly been in the works to improve the commercial corridor between 15th and 19th Streets. Improvements will include widening the sidewalks, removing the striped medians, creating curb extensions or “bulb-outs,” installing more bike racks, trees, kiosks, and art elements. Once component of the “art element” is a public artwork created by one artist and commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission. Since April, the artist selection process has been underway juried by the San Francisco Arts Commission, along with a panel of Mission District residents and business owners. A few weeks ago the four finalists were revealed, they are Ana Teresa Fernandez, Michael Arcega, Brian Goggin, and Misako Inaoka.

Valencia and 16th Street, a major intersection within the designated area of the Valencia Streetscape Improvement Project

These finalists represent a range of disciplines, including artists who have experience working within public spaces, such as Goggin, and more studio-based artists like Fernandez. In fact, Goggin’s “Defenestration,” an installation of furniture and household items fastened to the exterior of an old hotel on the corner of 6th and Howard Street has become a recognizable and celebrated part of San Francisco’s South of Market landscape. His project “Language of the Birds” currently on view in downtown San Francisco was recently revered as one of the best public artworks in the country. The work of Fernandez, Arcenga, Goggin, and Inaoka ranges conceptually as well, including themes of immigration, women and labor, and the boundary between what is natural and artificial. They also represent a diversity of ethnicities, backgrounds, and ages, and I believe are all residents of the Mission District. Based on the video interviews conducted by Stephanie Rousselle of the Mission Local blog, the artists each mention their unique relationships to the neighborhood and most credit their artistic inspiration and sustainability in part to the diversity and vibrancy of the Mission District.

“Defenestration” by Brian Goggin. Furniture and household items emerging from an abandoned hotel on Howard and 6th Street.

Tomorrow morning these artists will meet with streetscape designers and members of the Mission District community to discuss their proposal for their public project. The meeting will be held at the Mission Police Station Community Room at 630 Valencia Street from 9:30 – 11:30 a.m. The public is invited to attend this meeting to gain more information and share their vision of the neighborhood. Unfortunately, I can’t attend the meeting and so I’m including a here a list of questions I would ask if I could go in hopes that someone will attend and report back.

What site will the artist use?

How will the work respond to the neighborhood?

Will it be participatory?

Will the work evolve over time?

Will the work be temporary or permanent?

How will it interact with local businesses and residents?

How will it maintain the diversity of the neighborhood?

What is the artists’ relationship to the Mission District?

How will the work function in relationship to the improvement projects?

Will the projects respond to the issues addressed in the streetscape plan including the “problem of graffiti and flyering”?

Of course, I have an entirely seperate set of questions about the Valencia Streetscape Improvement Project itself, but I’m afraid I’m a bit too late in the planning process to raise those questions in any sort of community meeting enviroment. Perhaps I will address them in another post soon. Despite my questions and heightened concern about the role of the artist within redevelopment and improvement projects, I am excited about the potential of this project and confident that these four artists will propose thoughtful and challenging work within the complex and multi-layered context of Valencia Street and the Mission District.

]]>http://openspace.sfmoma.org/2009/07/public-art-and-improvement-part-2/feed/5The Garden as Protesthttp://openspace.sfmoma.org/2009/06/the-garden-as-protest/
http://openspace.sfmoma.org/2009/06/the-garden-as-protest/#commentsThu, 04 Jun 2009 00:31:16 +0000http://blog.sfmoma.org/?p=2978Last month I attended a lecture sponsored by the Townsend Center for Humanities at UC Berkeley by local author, Rebecca Solnit entitled “If Gardens are the Answer, What is the Question?” Solnit, whose work ranges in topics from San Francisco geographies, to the history of walking, to landscape, gender, and art, addressed the recent popularity ... More]]>

Last month I attended a lecture sponsored by the Townsend Center for Humanities at UC Berkeley by local author, Rebecca Solnit entitled “If Gardens are the Answer, What is the Question?” Solnit, whose work ranges in topics from San Francisco geographies, to the history of walking, to landscape, gender, and art, addressed the recent popularity of gardens as educational tools and community resources in schools, rehabilitation centers, churches, and of course, the lawn of the Obama’s White House. Solnit considered the garden as an answer to the corporate farming industry, to American’s alienation from food, and to the development of safe, urban neighborhoods.

The vegetable and herb garden planted on Hooper Street by FARM

Robyn Waxman, a Graduate Design student from the Calfornia College of the Arts (CCA) confronted similar questions as she embarked on her thesis project this past fall. Waxman questioned her role as a designer and activist in today’s socio-political climate. The answer to these questions came in the form of a 66-foot long vegetable and herb garden built on the Westside of Hooper Street—a side street in the industrial area between San Francisco’s South of Market and Potrero Hill neighborhoods. Hooper Street bisects CCA’s campus and is used primarily for parking for students and faculty. The garden is growing strawberries, raspberries, chard, spinach, thyme, lavender, and marigolds while simultaneously using bioremediation techniques to remove toxins from the soil. The garden was created by FARM, an organization initiated by Waxman and comprised of students from CCA and members of the local community, including several day laborers who use Hooper Street as a pick-up site. FARM stands for “The Future Action Reclamation Mob” and is organized horizontally, anyone can work on or eat from the garden. More than a community garden, I think of FARM as a direct-action collective. Tucked between two buildings owned by a private college, Hooper Street is unused public property and therefore belongs to the residents of San Francisco. Rather than waiting for the city’s approval, the FARMers took it upon themselves to transform this neglected side street they pass everyday into a sustainable project site that generates produce for the local community.

Robyn Waxman, MFA Design Student and initiator of FARM

FARM joins a lineage of local artists working with the garden as a medium including the Futurefarmers’ Victory Gardens,the Mission Greenbelt Project initiated by Amber Hasselbring, and the environmental projects of the San Francisco art and design collective, Rebar. It seems that more and more artists are addressing issues of urbanism and the environment or perhaps it is the opposite, the green movement looks to artists to use their resources and creativity to reimagine the relationship between city dwellers, nature, and food production. Regardless, the distinctions between the artist, activist, environmentalist, and gardener are blurry.

As an activist herself, 39-year-old Waxman, recalls the civil disobedience of the early 1990s: protests against the first Gulf War that took the form of large demonstrations and marches and later, the street theatrics and puppetry of organizations like Act Up or Reclaim the Streets. These highly visible protests stand in stark contrast to the somewhat fractured anti-war movement of today. Waxman is concerned about the lack of participation in today’s anti-war protests, especially by the younger generation or millennials, as she refers to them (those born between the 1980s and mid-1990s). As a millennial myself, I, too, have felt frustrated with the seemingly apathetic approach to civil disobedience of my peers and yet, admit to often letting my own feelings of defeat result in passivity. The incessant comparison of the dissent of my generation, today’s twenty-somethings, and my parents, those coming of age during the civic unrest of the 1960s, is both telling and yet, limiting, as well. The context feels very different.

Members of FARM work on sheet mulching during the first FARM Day, March 28, 2009

Through research and interviews, Waxman explored how millennials express discontent with today’s socio-political climate. For a generation saturated in technology, branding, and seemingly endless opportunities and upward mobility for those from economically stable backgrounds, protest seems less imminent—or perhaps it just functions differently. While people my age may not be holding picket signs and gathering in mass in the streets, Waxman determined that protest is happening through efforts that are local and sustainable. In a context in which one feels incapable of effecting change at the governmental level, what gains visibility and momentum is do-it-ourselves initiatives such as artists collectives, co-operative living spaces, skill shares, free schools, and gardens. For Waxman, the garden on Hooper Street is an “alternative form of non-violent protest” in which millennials make connections to each other through site specific community engagement.

As someone with very little knowledge of the practice of design or its pedagogical objectives, I was curious how Waxman’s role as a designer functioned within FARM. In her words, FARM is a “framework whereby others can ‘own’ their productive actions. Designers have been calling this design BY the people or democratized design. It challenges the dictatorial role of the designer, who ‘knows best.'” Waxman employed traditional design mediums to communicate her concerns. She designed posters that acted as an interactive forum in which students could express their concerns and ideas for the reuse of Hooper Street. These suggestions were then discussed through meetings and plans were made for the garden that included receiving donations, education about gardening techniques, and gathering a group of eager millennials to get the job done. While Waxman was the initiator of the conversations, she was, in no way, a dictator. Rather she provided a forum for discussion in which these requests and ideas could come into fruition. Waxman’s MFA thesis exhibition took the form of an installation of photographs, posters, work gloves, a live video feed of the garden, and a wheelbarrow overflowing with 1,000 copies of a newspaper entitled “Rethinking Protest: A Designer’s Role in the Next Generation of Collective Action” that documents FARM’s process.

Poster design Waxman made to engage the CCA community in a discussion about Hooper Street

When the garden was planted last March, I was pleased to see Hooper Street reinvented as more than just a dumping ground for trash and debris or a neglected path of dried grass that students cross each day as they leave one building and head to the other. Yet, this enthusiasm pitted itself against my skepticism about gardens becoming merely a trend in contemporary art practices. I sometimes worry that we are let off the hook by focusing solely on the local and admit that I haven’t let go of the hope that my generation is capable of initiating some kind of collective dissent, or dare I say, revolution. During her talk Solnit mentioned the “American weakness of confusing symbolic gestures as a solution” to solving political, social, or environmental issues. Maybe there is a balance to be struck between using our role as artists and activists to turn soil and plant seeds while always moving towards effecting change on a larger scale.

The limitations and also the benefits of working in this capacity are not lost on Waxman or the FARMers. The goal of FARM is to make visible the issues pertinent to the community surrounding Hooper Street: homelessness, immigration labor rights and offer an alternative to corporate farming, and the toxins effecting our environment, while going viral and inspiring the reclamation of other public spaces. (Waxman is currently working on a FARM in Davis, California). Waxman’s work pushes the boundaries of the function of a designer, and in doing so makes apparent the context within which artists operate or rather, the possibilities of civic and political engagement within an artists’ means. Within artistic practice the garden symbolizes the use of creative activity to make visible and accessible a growing consciousness about the environment. In the case of FARM it becomes a symbol of protest for a generation of younger people disenchanted by the strategies of political engagement expected of them by past generations. Within this context, FARM reminds us that the garden is not the answer, but rather an answer.